You know, this is interesting, because Stede doesn’t always have sideburns in the show. In the flashbacks of his life with Mary and the kids, he never has sideburns.

Originally posted by telumendils

Now, from a purely Doylist perspective, I think this choice was made to allow for greater visual distinction between past Stede and the Stede who has left his life to be a pirate. It’s also true that Stede’s design, as far as I can tell, does little to evoke his father’s (which was a plain black waistcoat and white rolled-up shirtsleeves under the bloody leather apron).

Originally posted by theshiningbeacon

But I do think it’s interesting to consider that, as Stede left the life his father would’ve demanded of him behind to pursue what he wanted and try to find a life he felt okay living, he might’ve looked in the mirror and copied his father’s styling in this one small way. Stede is still a character deeply concerned with how others perceive his masculinity - the sideburns are an undeniably masculine choice, and it is really compelling to imagine him nervous and trying to be in charge for the first time and just begging everyone to play along with him, and he’s (consciously or not) mirroring his father’s style choices as he does it. Just another way he’s trying to find approval in how he is performing his masculinity.

I once heard advice on dealing with Qanon family members who had fallen down the rabbit hole and only ever wanted to talk about conspiracy theories or the outrage bait they’d seen on Fox News or OANN or whatever, about not challenging them on their views but basically saying “I don’t want to talk about this; let’s talk about our plans for the weekend, or what movie we wanna go see later, or what interesting books you’ve read lately.” The idea being, arguing with someone can only further entrench their beliefs, and if you really want to shake someone out of their dismal universe of conspiracism, it helps to remind them of all the things that aren’t the fear-and-anger-activating content they’re stuffing their brains with for hours every day.

Maybe something like this could help? I have a hard time imagining that someone really believes The Handmaid’s Tale really is just around the corner–if you really believed that, surely you would be trying to flee to Canada or doing some political volunteer work or something–and sometimes doomer stuff can be kind of reflexive or phatic, like making a crack about how your retirement plan is to die in the water wars or something. But even if it isn’t, I don’t think there’s any point in trying to argue about this stuff in the moment. Instead try to build on the things you still find fulfilling in that friendship, the conversations and interests and activities with those friends that caused you to become friends in the first place.

If you can’t do that–if hanging out with them is always a constant grind of full-throttle doomerism, and they express no interest in actually trying to do something with their feelings of anger and frustration–you are perfectly within your rights to spend less time around them. You could, if you wanted to and you felt that you owed them at least that, give them a heads up as to why. If a close friend of mine or a family member was doing this, I would certainly talk to them about it. But your obligation to subject yourself to someone else’s self-destructive idee fixe is not bottomless. Even with a partner you are within your rights to eventually say “I’m not going to talk about this with you anymore.”

(And that’s not only true of politics or conspiracy theories, by the way! If you have a close friend or family member or partner who–for example–has severe depression but refuses to seek treatment for it, you are not obligated to be the sponge for their misery forever every time they need someone to talk to. If someone in your life is in a relationship or a job that is making them miserable, and won’t do anything to leave that relationship or find a new job, and just wants a friend to complain to, you are within your rights to eventually shut that down. Lots of people fall into a holding pattern in their life where they are unhappy but unable to do anything about it, and they will make this their friends’ or loved ones’ problem. That doesn’t make them bad people: lord knows I have found myself doing this before. It’s a very human thing to do. But sometimes the Good Friend Thing is to say “I love you, and will support you if you want to actually *do something* about your situation, but otherwise, oh my god shut the fuck up.” But, you know, nicely.)

But if your friends want to make themselves miserable because hanging on to an endless stream of toxicity and doomerism from social media (and I will bet this is primarily coming from social media) is more important to them than your friendship, and they can’t handle you not agreeing with them, you may lose them as friends. If you do, I’m sorry. That sucks. It’s hard to lose friends, and it’s even harder later in life when making new friends is more difficult, and I don’t want to pretend like that’s not a big deal.